Rodrigo Pietro makes directorial debut with Netflix’s ‘Pedro Páramo’

On the grassy plains of the set of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro received an unexpected call from Netflix. The streaming giant had recently purchased the movie rights to the Mexican novel “Pedro Páramo,” and they were offering him his directorial debut.

“I actually didn’t think too much about it,” said the 58-year-old filmmaker. “If I had, maybe, I would have hesitated. Instead, I said yes — thinking that it would happen years after. But, indeed, it did happen pretty soon.”

As he moved from the set of 1920s Oklahoma to the bright pink neighborhood of dream houses in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” the ghostly tale of “Pedro Páramo” remained on Pietro’s mind. As he prepared shots of Margot Robbie as Barbie rollerskating through Venice and Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” musical breakout, Pietro was simultaneously vetting potential scripts for the literary classic. Within a matter of months, the Mexico City-born creative was in the director’s chair, for the first time, overlooking the seemingly deserted ghost town in rural Mexico.

Describing the new role as a “natural step to expand [his] creative playground,” Pietro knew Netflix’s “Pedro Páramo,” released Nov. 6, was the ideal way to test the directing waters. Since he first read the 1955 Juan Rulfo novel in high school, the story has always resonated with him. In the face of die-hard Rulfo fans and three previous unsuccessful adaptations, Pietro leans on his deep-rooted understanding of the text itself, its cultural significance and new age technology to create an on-screen companion for the haunting tale.

Regarded as one of the first works of magical realism and the inspiration behind Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the story follows a man named Juan Preciado who travels to the town of Comala in search of his father, Pedro Páramo. In the deserted town, Preciado confronts his father’s past through a nonlinear series of supernatural encounters.

“When I was a teenager, Rulfo’s descriptions of these mysterious, scary nighttime scenes in Mexico’s countryside really stuck out to me,” said Pietro, who at first connected the most to Preciado. “Growing up, my father used to like hunting. I didn’t like hunting, but I went with him and would spend nights in the same setting. Hearing these stories about witches and ghosts was so fascinating to me.”

As he turned the pages of Rulfo’s novel, the cold and dark nights were not the only images that felt familiar. “Pedro Páramo” is set during the Mexican Revolution — a piece of history that dominated Pietro’s childhood imagination. His grandfather fought alongside Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and often shared his war stories from the early 1900s.

“To be able to have revolutionaries and adelitas [female soldiers] on their horses in front of the camera was fabulous,” said Pietro. “[The revolution] used to be a big theme in Mexican cinema back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, but not really anymore. I was excited to bring it back and be able to use authentic and handmade costumes.”

Consumed by the story, Pietro says through the making of this film he embarked on a similar journey to Preciado’s. Most of the film’s exterior shots were set in San Luis Potosí, coincidentally the same city where Prieto’s ancestors resided. But instead of encountering ghosts like in the surrealist novel, he was aiding actors like Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who plays Páramo, in expressing the feelings Juan Rulfo penned nearly 70 years ago.

“There is a personal connection that somehow translates into the film,” Pietro said. “The work of a director is introspective, but it is something you end up putting out there. I had to understand what moved me in each dialogue and each character to be able to transmit that to the actors.”

Páramo is portrayed as an evil tyrant who rules over Comala, eventually destroying it. Lead actor Garcia-Rulfo, a distant relative of the novel’s author, set out to find the human nature within the disagreeable character. Focusing on Páramo’s lifelong yearning for his lost love Susanna San Juan, the 43-year-old known for his role on Netflix’s “Lincoln Lawyer” says bringing a sense of vulnerability was essential to connecting with the protagonist.

“He’s a dreamer and a lover. He’s obsessed with this unreciprocated love and that kills him,” said Garcia-Rulfo. “This guy is a villain, but at the end, you start seeing why. He ends up being this guy who just never felt loved. I felt his pain. As an actor, you start putting yourself in different shoes and I think you become more empathetic.”

Garcia-Rulfo plays Páramo throughout his life, excluding the early childhood scenes. Due to the unconventional passage of time, the entire movie is spliced into disordered moments from Páramo’s past and Preciado’s present. At one moment, Páramo, as a little boy, runs through the river with San Juan. Next, he’s a corrupt father begging the priest for forgiveness until eventually becoming a decaying, heartbroken elder. And between these moments, Preciado is left to uncover his father’s actions through spiritual encounters. With rotating camera angles, disappearing figures and scenes shot in candlelight, Pietro says he wanted to walk the “line of naturalism, but with something strange going on.”

Through the adaptation of this complex tale, Pietro comes to the conclusion that filmmaking isn’t meant to be a form of therapy — it’s purely an avenue for exploration. He says he appreciates that “Pedro Páramo” has no clear message and doesn’t offer any answers.

“If anything, [‘Pedro Páramo’] does raise questions about who we are as Mexicans and what is in our blood? What’s in our past and why so much violence?” said Pietro. “It’s a very important exploration to just try to talk about why do we still have such problems of violence in Mexico, or even Latin America, for that matter.”